SolveSpace – Parametric 2d/3d CAD | Hacker News Reader

SolveSpace – Parametric 2d/3d CAD

solvespace.com

53 pointsjakobdabo10 comments

just FYI, 2.0 is pretty outdated. most active development happens in a fork [1] with regular dev builds.

[1] https://github.com/whitequark/solvespace

I really wish someone would come up with a really nice web-based parametric modeler, that has javascript as its primary language.

Imagine being able to use npm to share and install parametric parts as easy as:

var Bracket = require('some-bracket');

var L = new Bracket({ ... });

I've been using OpenJSCAD (demo at http://openjscad.org/) for small parts and really like it. With some work it could probably do what you describe but as far as I can tell no one is using it that way.

It would be cool if there was an ecosystem of OpenJSCAD parts that you could import as javascript modules.

Yeah, one should be able to import a part through a URL, and parametrize it ones own system.

I built the URL part out into a little side project. It uses OpenJSCAD but only the OpenSCAD interpreter so it can render the STL for you on the server.

https://hipcad.com

http://OnShape.com is a full-featured, browser-based 3D CAD system with a nice free account.

Also, they made (and built on top of) "Feature Script" which will allow such scripting.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/onshape-develop3d-live-grant-...

Why are people downvoting this? It seems like a perfectly reasonable wish. If something like this already exists then then please share it. The replies so farention things that are similar in some ways but either aren't parametric or don't have the extensibility that @iamleppert is lining for.

How does this compare to OpenSCAD?

If you are referring to SolveSpace, OpenSCAD is text-based, and you build your geometry programmatically.

SolveSpace has a CAD viewer interface, and you draw and constrain your geometry. I use FreeCAD as an alternative to AutoCAD (Inventor, Fusion360), but I have used SolveSpace for a small project where I wanted to animate the linkage for a client. The same could have been done in Fusion360 too. It was for fun.

The latest FreeCAD has greatly improved animation capabilities for renderings.

You can use SolveSpace's constraint solver in your own project, since I believe, it is separate from the viewer code. It is a very nice piece of work by one individual. I follow it once or twice a year to see if people are going to add much more to it.

How does it compare to FreeCAD?

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